Saudi Arabia: “Sarah Bint Talal Bin Abdul-Aziz, the Saudi princess who recently applied for asylum in Britain, has decided to join the vocal opposition. She is demanding reform and has announced the possibility of establishing an organization or party.” Sarah Bint Talal: Voiceless in the Kingdom – Al Akhbar

Yemen: “Young women’s rights activists are using new media to give a voice to the 90% of Yemeni women who face street sexual harassment. Yet support for the campaign has been far from unanimous; it has come face to face with a new form of patriarchy in the media, says Ghaidaa al-Absi.” Street sexual harassment: breaking the silence in Yemen – openDemocracy

Thought-provoking

“The problem in our societies today is that as women we are groomed in the ‘disease to please’ and that ‘everyone is good,’ and that being a good person equates to silencing our voices (both internally and externally). To break the cycle we have to break our own silence, be assertive in our language and above all else, trust ourselves. Trust your thoughts, your feelings, and know that your feelings have value, have merit, and are VALID. If we doubt ourselves to the point that we invalidate our own needs and concerns, or see ourselves in the way society sees us (too dramatic, overly-emotional, irrational, neurotic) we have internalized the sexism and, on the most unfortunate level, made ourselves vulnerable to the ultimate misogynists: the sophisticated abusers.” Sophisticated Abuse – Rooted In Being

“I thought back to the advice I’d repeatedly given over the years to my single friends looking to meet a mate: Get involved, do things you love. So I signed up for a charity, found a Pilates studio and tried a book group. And, like my friends have reported back countless times before — which I never quite believed until now, for various reasons — none of them worked. I also tried becoming closer with the few people I casually knew out here to no avail. I’m not sure whether it’s the distance, the already-full schedule or just plain me, but any way you slice it, we’re not hanging out and that bums me out.” Natalie Thomas: Making Friends Post 20-Something Is Harder Than Meeting a Mate – Huffington Post

Equality

“The problem with this is that it sees someone’s sexuality as somehow separate from them as a person. But it’s not. A person’s sexuality is a part of who they are, and a very integral part at that. You can turn this around with a thought experiment: Could you hate heterosexuality, but love heterosexuals? I don’t think so. I’m not trying to reduce gay people to their sexuality or anything, all I’m saying is that someone’s sexuality is an integral part of who they are, not something that can be separated out from them and hated independently.” So you say you don’t hate gay people, Part II – Love, Joy, Feminism

“The point is this: opposing equal rights for LGBTQ people means placing them at a severe social disadvantage. It means singling them out as an inferior class.That isviolent – but in that subtle, smiling way that says, “I’m doing this for your own good.” It’s not the blunt force trauma of open, personal hatred, the baseball bat that hits you in the face but will eventually heal. “Hate” can barely begin to describe the acid burn of discrimination. It whittles away at your soul, turning supposed friends and loved ones against you, denying your right to voice your pain, insisting that if you could just bedifferent you would be accepted like everyone else.
The truth is, I would rather take a baseball bat to the face. I would rather live in a world where some people fervently hate me, but the rest recognize my rights as a free and equal citizen. Why should gay people care whether or not evangelical Christians hate them? It’s not about emotion. It’s about survival.Disadvantaged people don’t care that you don’t hate them.” “I Don’t Hate Gay People, They Just Shouldn’t Get Married”: Chick-fil-A’s Supporters Need a Lesson on Structural Violence – The Phoenix and Olive Branch

“An abortion would have been best for me because there is no way that my love-starved trauma-addled mother could have ever put me up for adoption. It was either abortion or raising me herself, and she was in no position to raise a child. She had suffered a traumatic brain injury, witnessed and experienced severe domestic violence, and while she was in grade school she was raped by a stranger and her mother committed suicide. She was severely depressed and suicidal, had an extremely poor support system, was experiencing an unplanned pregnancy that resulted from coercive sex, and she was so young that her brain was still undeveloped.” I Wish My Mother Had Aborted Me – Role / Reboot

“There wasn’t even a thought in my mind about taking a maternity leave,” said Mrs. Stern, whose oldest child was 3 at the time. “It was like, Oliver was going to be born, and he was, and life was going to be continuing in — I don’t want to say madness — but the way that I do business.” For Executive Women, Is Maternity Leave Necessary? – NY Times

Health

“I have spoken very openly here on this blog about living with chronic pain, illness and the ups and downs of that reality. I am starting to change that reality, slowly, and I am acutely aware how much I am learning about the personal responsibility we all have for our health. This is theone body we have on this earth, and I don’t mean to state the obvious but without it we are kind of stuck….” the harsh truth of health – the Dexterous Diva

Beauty & Body Image

“When commenters say, “Don’t say that,” when they say, “Don’t talk about your body-hatred,” they are silencing the problem, and silencing leads to shame, and shame, in my opinion, can be worse than the original problem. It becomes “not merely unspoken,” as Adrienne Rich wrote in Lies, Secrets, and Silence, “but unspeakable.”” Why Can’t We Talk About Our Own Body Hatred? – Role / Reboot

“Today I’m talking knickers, well, not just knickers, but all foundation garments. Like building a house, if the foundations aren’t solid, the house won’t be stable, your underwear has a huge effect on your overall look and how great you will look.” K is for Knickers – Inside Out Style